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Friday, March 28, 2014

Recipe: Grandma Esther's Lefse Recipe

When Iris gave me this piece of paper, she thought I would like to have it. I took a glance at the note.

Then a few special words caught my eye: It's Grandma's

Lefse recipe.

And so it was.

The recipe had been sent to Iris by my cousin Dean, who used to like to hang out at the farm in the Summertime. He evidently had grown to like Grandma's Lefse and she had given him the recipe.

It made all the lefse makers happy because we didn't have her recipe. We had lefse recipes galore. They all tasted good to us. We didn't realize that we didn't have her particular recipe until she wasn't around to ask which one it was. So now we have it, and here it is. First please note that in the bowl on the counter pictured above are egg-sized pieces of lefse dough ready to go.

Lefse making takes some specialized equipment: Above is a potato ricer.

Above is a pastry board and flour covered pastry cloth. Some lefse makers don't use these, but we do in GriggsDakota. A special lefse rolling pin that has circles milled into its roller works best. A lefse stick is the only way to move the lefse around the kitchen as you make it.

Rolling is tricky. It takes flour, but too much and the lefse loses its flavor, too little and it sticks to the rolling pin and the pastry cloth.

This is an electric lefse griddle which is set at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Electric lefse grills make keeping an even temperature much easier than the wood fired cook stoves of years gone by.

When brown spots appear on the griddle side, turn it over.

Then remove it from the griddle. We use a towel and a layer of wax paper to keep the rounds from drying out until we can package them.

Lefse freezes well.

Grandma Esther's Lefse Recipe

10 pounds of potatoes

peeled cooked until tender, drained and riced with a potato ricer (pictured above)

Mix

1/2 cup Butter

1/3 cup heavy cream

1 Tablespoon Salt

1 Tablespoon White Sugar

Into the hot riced potatoes. Cool this mixture, then stir in:

2 1/2 Cups all-purpose flour.

Form the dough into egg size portions and roll out into about 1/8 inch thickness.

Fry on a hot griddle (about 400 degrees Fahrenheit) until bubbles form and brown spots appear on the underside. Turn and cook until spots appear on second side.

Remove from griddle and stack on a slightly dampened towel (or on a wax paper lined towel as pictured above)

Note: In GriggsDakota, we call it frying, but there is no additional fat added to the griddle. Some families refer to the process as baking or cooking, but it all happens on the griddle.